


Hold Your Fire

by stateofintegrity



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26501791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: A ceasefire announcement prompts revelations.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Hold Your Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [L_M_Biggs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/L_M_Biggs/gifts).



> Thanks to L_M_Biggs who inspired the idea of Fourth and my tumblr anon who suggested a celebratory fic for my 100th Charles/Klinger addition - thank you!

“Don’t get too excited,” Hawkeye warned him. “This has happened before.” 

Potter’s advice was the same. Given that the man was a veteran of two wars and this interminable “police action,” (the rhetoric fooling  _ no one _ ), Winchester knew he ought to listen. But from the sound of things, he was hardly the only one swept up in celebration. He heard the noisemakers with which they had rung in 1952 make a reappearance, heard voices raised in exultation. It was an improvement over the now too-commonplace sound of cries of pain. Sometimes it felt like those screams had painted the inside of his skull, had become a sort of aural wallpaper which he could not tear down without damaging some essential and internal part of himself. The Bostonian knew that liquor stashes were being raided, delicacies exchanged or disposed of in the hopes that they’d all be going home. 

Winchester glanced around the Swamp. What souvenirs would his tentmates take with them? It was to be hoped (though he’d never breathed a word of it to anyone, not even Honoria) that Hunnicutt would (eventually, anyway) take home  _ Pierce _ . Charles didn’t think the lanky, blue-eyed Maine doctor could survive on his own; surely some of the flurry of missives that were sent from Mill Valley to Uijeongbu reflected this? Peg Hunnicutt seemed a superior woman. Surely she could welcome home two war-battered men instead of one? Charles hoped that was the case. 

As for him… what Charles longed to bear home was every bit as audacious as the Hunnicutt household welcoming Pierce. And if he couldn’t have that, he would have settled for a quilt made from the man’s delicate creations, would have wrapped himself in squares of different fabrics and closed his eyes to imagine that inimitable frame curled into his side, at once tough and delicate, his hair - so impossible in a war zone! - bearing the scent of honey and black cherries and almonds. 

He felt his heart speed up with familiar longing. How many lost beats, ghost beats erased by acceleration, had Maxwell Q. Klinger cost him in his seven months in Korea? The thoracic surgeon wasn’t convinced it was healthy, what the younger man did to his heart, but Max was his favorite reason to suffer, to endure. In his more ridiculous moments, Charles thought back to the books of heroes and knights he’d read as a boy and called it chivalry. There was nothing heroic about this war, certainly.  _ But for you I would fall, darling; beside you I would serve, eternally.  _

And, just as a smile crossed his face that had so much pain mixed in it that it barely merited the the title, Maxwell appeared, fear momentarily chased from his face by the promise of peace. 

Charles had looked for Klinger earlier, wanting to share champagne with him because Klinger reminded him of the sparkling stuff: effervescent and sweet and rare, so rare! 

“Where were you?” he asked his friend, thinking Klinger’s skirt had something champagne to it, too, a glittering color between gold and silver. Worn over black tights, the shifting folds were hypnotizing. 

“Guard duty.” 

“What’s left to protect?”

He’d never considered this. If they were leaving, if this was it, what was left to save? Something loosened in his chest the way it had, once, when Charles had helped him escape a corset he’d laced badly. 

The words were a tangled, tear-choked mess. He’d had no idea how many of them there were, or what good he really thought it could do, laying them at the feet of the better educated man. He did it anyway. What  _ was _ left to protect? And this was a ceasefire, right? If Charles got angry, he could remind him that they’d all been ordered to hold their fire, to stand down. 

It was so muddled, what he said, so peppered with sobs, that Charles heard half, maybe, and understood less for at least the first three minutes. “Take me with you, Major.”

That part came clear enough. 

“I’ll live somewhere close so you can just see me sometimes,” Klinger promised with such wet and trembling lashes. “Or I can work for you, maybe? I’m a good little nurse, I think. Or some kind of servant? Or I could be your patient? You know my lungs aren’t that good. I can’t… I can’t breathe without you.”

He tried again. “I’ll go to Sweden, Major. I’ll get that surgery so nobody’ll mind. Nobody has to know who I used to be.” 

“Maxwell… Max… please stop talking.” 

He tried, but there were a few more sobbing, birdlike sounds. “Sorry, sir. I had to ask. I… You aren’t easy to lose, Major. I… I knew I’d have to. But if I didn’t  _ try _ … well, then I’d really be a coward.” 

Charles opened his arms. It was a gesture that only Honoria had ever witnessed him make, Honoria to whom he would take back this lovely man as a second brother. He would join their hands… and he would join Maxwell’s life to his in every way that he possibly could. 

Maxwell didn’t even realize that he practically hurled himself into those strong arms; he was so dizzy that he didn’t even notice that he was lifted lightly, easily, off of the ground. The way his legs wrapped around the other man had to do with the very make of them, maybe; the center of the Major’s bones spoke to the center of his and they clacked together like magnets. 

Charles buried his face in the clinging Corporal’s hair, murmuring words that set off fireworks under his shivering skin that echoed the celebratory strains outside. One of his huge hands worked to chase away the tears that had slid down Max’s cheeks, but he didn’t notice that he was crying, too. “You are capable of conjuring truly horrible visions when you wish it, beloved.” 

Charles had never called him that before. It was, Klinger thought, blinking stunned, dark eyes, one hell of a declaration. “I can’t lose you. Nothing else… nothing else seemed bad as that.” His hand rested on Charles’ cheek as if to memorize the softness of his skin. 

They slid down, together, to the cot, still tangled. 

“But servitude, darling? Or, God forbid,  _ Sweden _ !? You may be whatever you wish on my arm or in my bed… but I do not think we need to bring knives into it.” His eyes darkened then with worry. “Unless it is your wish?” 

“I just thought it’d make it easier. With your folks. Your job. I don’t… I don’t want to ruin anything, cost you anything.” 

“Listen to me carefully, my darling girl.”

Klinger giggled at this. Charles had played with pronouns on his half before, but he hadn’t expected this level of acceptance. 

“I want you. All of you. Whatever and however you wish to be. The only family I care about is the one we will create with Honoria.”

Klinger’s eyes were big, beseeching. “But, Major, you’ve said, y’know, stuff about Charles Emerson Winchester IV. Don’t you wanna get married and have kids?” 

Charles looked gleeful then, a kid on Christmas morning. “People expect me to say such things, darling. As for marriage, yes - I plan to marry you under whatever circumstances we can contrive it. As for a fourth Winchester, it is a fine name for a cat, no? I can scarce get you to say my name to me, so I doubt much confusion shall arise.” 

“We’ll just call him Fourth.” 

“That was a ‘yes,’ then?”

“In sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, in war and peace,” Klinger promised. 

Later that night, Hawkeye poked his head in to announce that the war continued, but it did nothing to dampen their private celebration. Whatever the future held, whether twenty years of combat or the beginning of the Pax Americana, Klinger and Winchester would face it together. 

End! 


End file.
